The University of Illinois Roman-period
Egyptian mummy at the Spurlock Museum has undergone two sets of CT scans twenty
years apart. In 1990, an interdisciplinary team was convened to investigate the
mummy before it went on display. Since autopsy was not permitted, we
concentrated on non-destructive imaging supplemented by materials analyses of
tiny bits of hardened resin, cloth, and insects from the damaged lower end of
the mummy.
The initial results showed that the mummy was a child
(because of dental development and open growth plates) with a broken head and a
collapsed chest. CT images showed some kind of packing material (cloth or mud?)
around the limbs and a wooden, so-called "stiffening" board under the
body inside the linen wrappings. The insects turned out to be flesh-eating
beetles, implying that the child’s body was partially decayed before it was
wrapped up.
The brain, heart, and lungs appeared to be still in
place inside the mummy, but as our consulting radiologist Dr. Joe Barkmeier at
Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana, IL, commented, “they’re all dried up and
moved around.”
Lack of evisceration and a concentration on the exterior
decoration instead of tissue preservation are features of many Roman period
mummies. So is the wooden board underneath the body, inside the wrappings. Sex could not be determined because the
pelvic region was obscured by layers of tissues and wrappings and sexing a
young child based upon skeletal remains alone is difficult in the best of circumstances.
In 2011, we decided to re-scan the mummy with
vastly improved imaging technology and computer software. David Hunt, Physical
Anthropology Collections Manager at the Smithsonian’s NMNH, was a consultant on
the new project.
Internal organs, packing, and bone fractures are
much more visible from the new CT scans. Dr. Hunt was able to age the mummy
child more precisely to about 8.5 years at the time of death by identifying key
molars and tooth positions in the jaw.
However, the measurements of the long
bones of the legs came up a bit short, suggesting that the child suffered a
period of malnutrition. Unfortunately, sex is still unknown because the pelvis
is collapsed and the similar densities of bone, tissue, and wrappings make
accurate observations problematic.
In the thoracic cavity, desiccated organs
lie up against the spine, which shows signs of compression fractures (probably
post-mortem). The occipital fracture is more severe than we originally thought,
and a piece of the skull was pushed inside the cranial cavity. Some brain
tissue is clearly visible, but it is possible that the embalmers attempted to
take out the brain through the back of the head instead of through the sinus at
the back of the nose.
New images show that the embalmers used
wads of cloth rather than mud or plant material to pad the thin little body and
make it appear more life-like. A recent pigment analysis by the Getty
Conservation Institute confirms that the red colorant on the stucco surface is
lead oxide, or minium, from Rio
Tinto, Spain, and that it matches that of nine other “red shroud,” Roman-period
mummies published the new book Herakleides:A
Portrait Mummy from Roman Egypt by
Lorelei Corcoran and Marie Svoboda. This finding confirms our conclusion that
the Spurlock mummy child came from a well-to-do family in Roman Egypt that
could afford expensive ingredients such as the red pigment and gold leaf seen
on the mummy wrappings.
